


Exposure

by cassyl



Series: Magic for Beginners [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, M/M, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyl/pseuds/cassyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of how Sherlock got his start as a magician.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exposure

Sherlock actually got his start in the business by exposing another magician.

This was long before John’s time – long before Sherlock had even set foot on a stage in his own right, in fact – but John knows the story well, because it’s been repeated in almost every media profile ever written on the great Sherlock Holmes, and John, of course, is the one who keeps all of Sherlock’s clippings. The story goes like this:

Years ago, a veteran magician named Jefferson Hope issued a challenge in a national newspaper as a publicity stunt, offering a thousand pounds to anyone who could explain how he did his most famous trick.

Of course, as everybody in the world of magic knows, exposure is the career killer. Once a trick has been exposed, it's spoiled for the audience, and only someone who's extremely stupid or extremely brilliant would invite people to kill his beloved cash cow.

At the time, Sherlock was just out of university, promisingly bright but wasting his talent on mindless pursuits (the newspapers are generally vague on this point, though John knows those pursuits mostly involved casual drug use and questionable company). Sherlock had a passing interest in magic as a boy, although it was quickly surpassed by a burning ambition to become a pirate and, later on, a spy. But while he’d grown out of his interest in vanishing pennies, he’d never really lost his love of being the smartest man in the room. Once Sherlock realized that Hope knew something his audience did not, he couldn’t rest until he knew, too.

Hope’s trick was a family-friendly variation on the Sicilian Paradox – he presented two identical vials, one that was filled with a supposedly volatile explosive, the other not. An audience member would be called up on stage and invited to choose one of the two bottles. Once the choice was made, there would be a loud bang, and whoever chose wrongly would get a face full of smoke and confetti – a harmless shock, startling but pleasantly so, easily laughed off afterwards. There was a fifty-fifty chance of choosing the right bottle, simple enough, except Hope had never lost, and he’d been performing the trick for years.

Unable to resist the promise of a puzzle, Sherlock went to see Hope’s show – and he kept going back, determined to figure the trick out. Night after night, he sat in the front row, watching carefully as Hope invited an audience member up onstage. It was obvious to him that Hope wasn’t using a plant – it was a different person every night, a low-level politician, a teenaged boy, a woman in an alarmingly pink cocktail dress – nor was he palming the rigged bottle and switching them when the other person wasn’t looking. But each night, the audience member chose wrongly and Hope got it right.

It took Sherlock four days to figure it out. Four days, and on the fifth, he volunteered himself and walked up onstage to expose Hope’s method in front of the entire audience. He got the thousand pounds and his picture in the paper, and the exposure of his most popular trick killed Hope’s career dead in its tracks.

After that, Sherlock was asked onto a couple of television programs to talk about the mechanics of stage illusion, and even though he didn’t know the first thing about the business, the workings of the tricks were perfectly clear, he insisted, to anyone who was paying attention. Those appearances made him a few enemies, to be sure, but Sherlock wasn’t interested in making friends, and he could never pass up the chance to prove how clever he was.

Before long, he’d developed a bit of a reputation as a debunker of magic tricks. He booked a few more television appearances, was asked to write a couple of articles for popular magazines. It wasn’t exactly a living, but the work kept his mind active and so he was content, more or less. Until he was asked to be a guest on a panel show and one of the other guests, another magician no doubt riled up by Sherlock’s air of universal disdain, said, “If you think you’re so clever, why don’t you try doing it yourself?”

Sherlock was stunned. He’d never even considered trying his own hand at magic, except for those boyhood games, which had lasted only until the novelty of linking rings and card tricks wore off. But suddenly it occurred to him that this was the perfect way to prove his cleverness: if he could apply what he knew about exposing magic tricks to a stage show of his own, he would be able to devise illusions that couldn’t be exposed because there was nothing to hide in the first place.

And that was exactly what he did. Within the year, he’d learned everything he could about stage magic and put together an act that dominated talent contests and amateur competitions all over the national circuit. He used the few media contacts he’d made to leverage himself further appearances, and before long he was selling out shows.

This is the story the papers tell, a story of a haughty but prodigiously talented young man who discovered an extraordinary way to channel his own natural gifts. But John knows it’s not quite that simple. He’s worked with Sherlock for almost a year, and he thinks he probably understands the man better than almost anyone else in the world.

It’s not that the story the papers tell is wrong, exactly. Sherlock does love to be the best and the brightest. He’ll outlive God trying to get the last word. John knows Sherlock does magic because it’s the one place where his skills aren’t a burden, but rather a wonder. As abrasive and cruel as he can be, Sherlock wants approval desperately – not to be liked, but to be acknowledged. He waits for it as he takes his final bow the end of each show. John sees the way those pale eyes search the crowd, knows his ears are straining to find in the applause some sign that what he has done is good enough, that those people out there in the dark understand. But it’s never enough, not for Sherlock.

Because the thing is, Sherlock has staked his entire career on hiding in plain sight. He doesn’t lie to the audience or even bother with misdirection or equivocation. He shows them the truth, but he shows it to them at such lightning speeds that none of them can ever hope to follow it.

But that’s the problem with an illusion, even one as ingeniously simple as Sherlock’s: it begs to be revealed. Sherlock keeps hoping the audience will put the pieces together, that one night someone will be able to see as he sees, but no one ever does. Instead, his fans are delighted by their own failings. What to Sherlock is idiocy is magic to the punters. They love to be taken in. But still, Sherlock keeps waiting and waiting for someone to come and lay him bare, expose him the way he’s exposed so many others.

John knows he can’t be the one to do it. He and Sherlock have grown close, it’s true, since they started working together, and John even fancies that Sherlock trusts him. But John doesn’t have the heartless intellect to expose Sherlock the way he wants to be exposed. John knows how all the tricks work, it’s true, but that’s because Sherlock’s shown him, often in painstaking detail. He’s learned to see the world the way Sherlock sees it, but he’s ultimately ordinary, no true match to Sherlock’s incredible gift. And John’s glad of that, really. He wouldn’t want to be the one to do it, doesn’t have the nerve for it – and he has the nerve for a lot of things.

But John knows that someone, some day, will come along who’s equal to the task, and while he doesn’t know what will happen then, he hopes that he’ll be there beside Sherlock when that day comes.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone else would like to take up the gauntlet on this premise, I would be so delighted to read it.


End file.
